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Population history

Human melting pots in southeast Asia

Nature volume 512, pages 262–263 (2014)Cite this article

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New genetic methods to analyse mixed human populations have extended existing, multidisciplinary evidence for the historical migrations and mixings of Austronesian peoples.

Modern populations in mainland and island southeast Asia fall into three groups as classified by differences in human biology — physical characteristics and appearance. The largest group encompasses modern Chinese and most mainland southeast Asians, Philippine people and Indonesians west of New Guinea. A second group, the Australo-Papuans, consists of modern Papuans (also known as New Guineans) and the distantly related Aboriginal Australians. The third group (Negritos) comprises diminutive Papuan-like peoples scattered from the Andaman Islands to the Philippines. From ancient skeletons, we know that, until 5,000 years ago, the people of south China, mainland southeast Asia and Indonesia were Australo-Papuans or Negritos, rather than Chinese-like. Hence, these first two strands of evidence — human biology and ancient skeletons — suggest that people from China replaced the original populations of mainland southeast Asia and Indonesia in the past 5,000 years.

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  1. Jared Diamond is in the Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095-1524, USA.,

    Jared Diamond

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  1. Jared Diamond
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Correspondence to Jared Diamond.

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Diamond, J. Human melting pots in southeast Asia. Nature 512, 262–263 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/512262a

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